


till all our strivings cease

by anticyclonerollingstone



Category: Dunkirk (2017)
Genre: M/M, Post-War, Supernatural Elements, and all the usual stuff to expect from something in the dunkirk tag, elements of christianity, persistent themes of death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2019-02-19 06:37:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13118136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anticyclonerollingstone/pseuds/anticyclonerollingstone
Summary: “They didn’t teach me about this in catechism,” Collins says.If only there were flight manuals for everything.





	till all our strivings cease

**Author's Note:**

> i'm not gonna lie, i wrote this mostly as part of a sort-of-almost joke. i know the voices and characterizations probably aren't great. the pacing might be weird and the breaks are odd. i apologize in advance for all of it.
> 
> title taken from "dear lord and father of mankind."

    The first time Farrier cries since his capture - having cried while sending his Spitfire up in flames in what had been up to that point the hardest thing he had ever done, and then those tears had stopped within minutes once his smoking plane was out of his sight - is at a flash of golden blond hair in bleak sunlight, years later. His heart lightens in his chest and he takes two hopeful steps before the image flashes away and reality sets back in, leaving him with a heavier heart than before, and tear-filled eyes that he swears could be steaming on the cold skin of his cheeks. He curses himself and his tears, wipes his eyes with the heel of his palm.   

    He sees another fleeting glimpse the next morning, and two more before the week ends.  

    Farrier asks quietly into the darkness one night, kept awake by a memory of Collins’s bright eyes among the faces of pacing men earlier that morning, why Collins can't just let him be. 

    “Do you really want that?” Collins’s voice comes back. Farrier startles, his heart nearly shattering his ribs as he pulls himself up frantically. Collins is leaning up against the wall next to Farrier's head, dressed in his flight uniform, Mae West and all. Farrier can’t speak, staring in suspicious confusion at Collins’s face. He looks older than Farrier left him, more worn, bearing some shrapnel scars across one side of his face. 

    “How did you get here?” Farrier finally whispers. Collins shrugs. The man next to Farrier stirs. 

    “Shut up!” the man whispers harshly.  

    “Fuck off,” Collins says at full volume, and Farrier flinches but the man doesn’t stir any further, and no one wakes up to sleepily curse them. 

    "Christ, Collins, let me alone," Farrier breathes, rolling over and screwing his eyes shut against what can undoubtedly be some hallucination. Collins laughs, sounding worlds away.

    “If that’s how you’d like it, then,” Collins says.  

    Farrier doesn’t hear him for the rest of the night, and finds the following week free of any apparitions of sunny hair or clear blue eyes. He mulls it over, accepts Collins as some vision borne of stress and hunger and dehydration, something like a mirage in the desert, maybe something of madness, even. Hallucination is certainly easier, he thinks with a tight chest, than the thought of Collins being dead

-

    Farrier watches a man, some American boy with dark hair and a loud mouth, struggling to stand on his own after having been struck in the face, seemingly within a hair of his life. The man stumbles, yards away from Farrier, leaning against a fence rail. He grapples for balance, refusing to fall to the ground in defeat. Something glimmers next to him, a steely blue, and Farrier blinks hard as he makes out the form of Collins in his uniform, desperately reaching to help steady the man, his arms only passing through him. 

    Collins’s face is bloodied, one side of it covered with a gruesome pink burn, his hair singed away, one eye clouded over. His uniform is stained with blood along the one side, tattered and burned. Farrier wants to run to him but realizes, watching Collins struggle to hold up a man he cannot touch, that Collins isn’t truly there, and more importantly that aiding this man would risk his own well-being. So he waits, and he watches as the man finally sits back against a fencepost while Collins kneels next to him, speaking rapidly in words the man can’t hear. Collins fumbles for the man’s hand, can’t take hold of it, and sits back himself, the identifiable side of his face looking just as broken with pain as the mangled side does with burns.  

    Collins’s unscathed eye finds Farrier and his face changes from one of pain to one of guilt, as if he was caught doing something he shouldn’t. He vanishes before Farrier can blink.  

    “I’m sorry,” Collins’s voice appears next to Farrier, quietly and guiltily. Farrier doesn’t turn to him. “I've nowhere else to go.” 

    “Collins,” Farrier begins, as quietly and as steadily as he can, swallowing hard, “are you dead?”  

    Collins laughs and it sounds miles away. 

    “I think it’s safe to say that, yes.” 

    Farrier still doesn’t look at him. His stomach lurches.  

    “You can look at me, Farrier,” Collins says softly. Farrier grinds his teeth and turns reluctantly to look at Collins, whose mangled face has returned to something closer to what Farrier remembers, though older and more worn, with that same shrapnel scarring across his cheek. Collins seems to notice Farrier’s thoughtfulness. “This is just how I remember myself best.” 

    Farrier’s stomach turns. He doesn’t want to ask what happened to Collins, or what killed him, or what scarred him. He tips his head up to the sky and sighs, praying the tears he can feel welling up will stay back.

    “I’m losing it,” Farrier says with resignation. 

    “Oh, I don’t think so,” Collins says, “but I’ll let you be."

    Collins winks and is gone. Farrier’s shoulders shake slightly and he swallows hard, straining to hold himself still.  

    “Right,” Farrier sighs. He looks over at the man propped against the fencepost and takes a long breath before stepping over to crouch down next to him, wipe the blood from his eyes, and slowly help him up.

-

    Collins comes and goes through Farrier’s long days and longer nights. Farrier feels him before he sees him, a sensation like a vague staticky impression in the air. Sometimes he doesn’t see him at all, can only feel something heavier and more familiar than a conventional feeling of being watched. 

    When Collins lets himself be seen he looks as solid as Farrier’s own hands. Farrier isn’t sure if it’s better or worse than the ghostly transparency he would have expected.

    “How did you get here?” Farrier asks.

    "I'm not sure, really. I just got dropped here. I thought it was Hell at first as it's a bit of a dump and with all these gloomy faces," Collins winks, and Farrier laughs. "But you were here, so it couldn't be Hell, could it?” 

    “Sure it could.” 

    “Ah,” Collins says through the side of his mouth, “I don’t know about that.”

-

    If Collins is a hallucination, he surely becomes a welcome one.

    At times Farrier wishes Collins would go away, leave him alone to be miserable and starving and beaten down on his own. Collins is only a manifestation of his collapse, he knows it. He tells Collins so one day, in a fit of exhaustion, nearly crying that Collins is just a symptom of his own mind wearing thin. Collins leaves him, nowhere to be seen nor felt, for a couple of lonely days.

    If only Farrier had perished before being dropped into what some of the men called a _properly respectable camp for distinguished airmen of the Allied forces._ He curses himself for it.

    Nevertheless he finds himself longing for Collins’s appearances and the short exchanges that just for a moment can fool Farrier into thinking neither of them had ever left England. 

-

    Farrier is scolded twice by other men for talking to himself at night. Collins laughs at him for it.

    In their nighttime conversations Farrier learns that if he thinks toward Collins, Collins can hear him. It feels sinfully close to praying.

-

    “Did I ever tell you what they did with me once you were gone?” Collins asks one night as he appears at Farrier’s side. Farrier rolls onto his side to look at him and raises his eyebrows in question. “They sent me to Africa.” 

    _Africa?_

    “Africa. It was so fucking hot, Farrier. And you know what else?” 

    _What?_

    “I got to see Italy. It’s just what you said it would be. All sunshine and blue skies."

    _Someday we’ll…_  but Farrier stops himself.

    "Not a day went by that I didn't wish you were there. I know you always said you’d like to go just for the sun," Collins says. His gaze grows distant and the side of his face flares with redness, his eye clouds over. He detects some alarm in Farrier's face and looks startled himself, reaches up to his own marled cheek, and vanishes. Farrier closes his eyes hard. He doesn’t sleep.  

-    

    In a moment of bravery one afternoon, Farrier reaches out for Collins, just to take hold of his hand, more in curiosity than in longing. His hand goes through Collins's with a sweeping coldness that leaves Farrier heaving and his fingers tingling all the way to his shoulder.

    “Sorry,” they both say. Collins looks at Farrier with so much sorrow painted on his face that Farrier has to look away.

-

    Farrier accepts, slowly and reluctantly, that maybe he isn’t losing it.

    “Collins,” he whispers softly into the darkness one night, feeling Collins near him but not seeing him. 

    “Hm?” Collins appears, sitting against the wall next to Farrier.

    “How did you…” Farrier can’t bring himself to ask, trailing off with a burning lump in his throat. 

    “Die?" 

    Farrier nods.

    “Shot down over the Mediterranean,” Collins says simply. 

    “When?” Farrier breathes.

    “A bit before you first saw me. I think. I don’t know where I was before I got here, and then I was here for a while before you could see me.”

    Farrier nods.

    “At first I was glad for the water because it put out the fire,” Collins gestures up to his face, “but I couldn’t get out of the cockpit.” Collins says it with a shrug.

    Farrier shudders, tries to repress it. Collins looks at him apologetically in the dim blue light. His face shimmers with the freshly burned sheen that appears when he starts losing his grip, but he doesn’t vanish from sight this time. Farrier pulls his eyes from Collins’s, struggling to see in the grainy darkness but still making out the dark blood-stained gash on Collins’s side, likely what left him unable to get out of his flooding cockpit in the sea. 

    Farrier’s face aches, his mouth set and brows furrowed painfully tight. He looks back up at Collins, who can only nod before he fades into the dark.

-

    “Where do you go when you’re not here?” Farrier asks softly one day while he sits alone. Collins blinks thoughtfully. 

    “What do you mean?” 

    “When you’re not here, with me. Where are you?”

    Collins holds his lips between his teeth thoughtfully.

    “Sometimes I see my mother.” 

    Farrier had seen pictures of Collins's mother. Collins kept them in his bible and had amiably handed them to Farrier one night when he had seen Farrier crane his neck to look at Collins's bible, which was filled with as many notes and photographs as it was scripture, so full of intimate sentiment that Farrier felt unfit to handle it. Farrier had handled the photographs gingerly, feeling like he was violating something as he studied the face of Collins's mother. 

     _You can’t really tell, but her hair is red,_  Collins had said. Collins was the spitting image of his father, who appeared in a single photograph alongside his wife, but Collins’s smile and the light in his face came entirely from his mother. She was a beautiful woman, and Farrier had grown fond of her through what he saw of her in Collins. 

    “Can she see you?” Farrier asks.

    “No. I don’t want her to. But I think she might know I’m there. It seems like she can feel it,” Collins says, his eyes distant and soft. 

    Farrier nods. 

    "What about when you're not with someone?" 

    Collins's eyebrows furrow thoughtfully, his jaw offset in contemplation. 

    "Nowhere, I suppose.” 

    “What’s the nowhere like?”

    “Nothing at all.”

    Farrier doesn’t want to hear more. Collins sits with him in silence for a few moments before vanishing without warning.

-

    Collins whirls in next to Farrier as he finishes a hushed conversation with a couple of men who have been planning some outrageous escape. Farrier had been willing to accept his fate at first, but had in the last years grown tired of sitting by waiting for the war to end, so he pulled himself into step with other airmen itching for escape, or excitement, or hope. No plans ever reached the beginning stages of execution, but it kept them busy and their minds up, and that was enough.

    “You really should be careful,” Collins tells him. Farrier looks at him in exasperation. “It's only going to get you shot.”

    “There are worse things,” Farrier says simply. Collins grinds his teeth and then bobs his head stiffly in acceptance. 

-

    Without any warning the camp finds itself liberated, and Farrier finds himself in the graces of the American armed forces. One green-eyed man pushes his own meal into Farrier’s hands, offers him clean socks and coffee and chocolate. Farrier accepts, tells him he’s never been so happy to see a yank, and the American laughs, jesting that he never thought he’d so gladly give an Englishman his extra socks. 

-

    Returning to the gentle soils of England feels to Farrier like a dream, though not a particularly good one.

    Farrier is in a daze as he's placed in a hospital with a handful of other men. Most of them are worse off than he is, their faces more gaunt, their eyes more empty, their nights more restless. He’s kept awake most nights by the sounds of their anguish, and by the guilt weighing in his own heart, guilt that he came home with most of his mind and all his parts save for the damage to his joints that left him stiff.

    Farrier waits to be jerked into real wakefulness at the camp again. It doesn't happen. 

    Hudson, an airman Farrier had been particularly fond of, comes to see him. Farrier aches with relief and gratitude that Hudson was chosen by whatever fates to survive the war with nothing but a long scar across his cheek and some prematurely white hair in his loose brown curls. 

    Hudson gives him stiff but normal conversation, though he looks confused at Farrier’s insistence on only talking about the mundane. Farrier asks about Hudson’s family and Hudson grins as he tells him that the wife is well, the kids are well, and have in fact adopted two stray dogs, who are also well. 

    Farrier’s chest tightens when the small talk runs out. His panic is mirrored in the set of Hudson’s mouth.

    "But how are you, Farrier?” Hudson asks gently, finally.

    “I want to go home,” Farrier says simply, as if he still knows where home is. Hudson nods. 

    “I’m sure.”

    Unable to bear the uncertainty nagging in the back of his mind, Farrier works his jaw in an attempt to speak. 

    “Hudson,” Farrier says, voice breaking. He prays he won’t cry as he meets Hudson’s sad, knowing gaze. “Did…Collins is…”

    Hudson scrubs a hand over his mouth and lets his shoulders fall. He shakes his head. The sitting room feels too bright and too big, and for a moment Farrier longs for the heavy footfalls of guards to rouse him from a dream.

    “He went down in the Mediterranean.”

    Farrier nods, ice running through his body. 

    “That’s partly why I came out here, though I assumed you’d already know. You did already know, yes?" 

    Farrier nods again, staring at Hudson’s boots. 

    “He was a right mess for a while. He was lost without you, both of you. I looked after him as much as I could and we flew together for a bit,” Hudson offers in consolation. Farrier can only nod once more. Hudson looks far away and he cocks his head and squints. “You know, sometimes I still think..."

    Hudson doesn’t finish, and he meets and glances away from Farrier’s curious, expectant gaze. 

    _You still think you see him. Feel you’re about to turn and find him with you._  

    Hudson sits with him a while longer in silence. He squeezes Farrier’s shaking hand before he leaves, tells him where to find him if he needs him. Farrier thanks him, shakes his hand, and listens until Hudson’s echoing footsteps fade away. He settles back into the chair, the wicker weaving creaking beneath him.  

    “You really didn’t believe me?” Collins asks, suddenly perched on the arm of the chair. 

    Farrier looks up at him in tired silence. Collins reaches out to brush his knuckles along Farrier’s cheek. Before the icy electric sensation of Collins's touch can meet his skin, Farrier hauls himself up from the wicker chair and walks away as quickly as his aching hip will let him. He feels Collins growing further away as he makes his way to his room and his bed. He sleeps without dreaming.

    Collins is there when he wakes up, quietly apologizing as soon as Farrier’s eyes open. Farrier accepts the apologies and acts like he doesn’t notice Collins trying in vain to hold his hand, sending a slow shock up his arm.

-

    When the hospital loses interest in Farrier they carefully tell him he can go. They offer to reset his broken, poorly-healed fingers, and he excuses himself to vomit in a sink at the thought of it. 

    When he finally signs the papers and is finally free of the hospital and the military, he finds that he has nowhere to go. So he gets on the first train that will take him to the only home he might have left, setting off for his mother in London.  

    Collins settles into the train seat next to Farrier. Farrier, without thinking, offers him a cigarette. Collins chuckles and Farrier ducks his head as he puts it away. 

   “I met your mum once,” Collins says, gazing out the window. Farrier looks at him questioningly over his hands as he lights his cigarette. “I did. Beautiful woman. I gave her your bible.”

    _Ah, of course you did,_  Farrier thinks. Collins chuckles. 

    “It just seemed proper,” Collins says. 

    _Of course._  

    They sit in silence for the rest of the ride. Farrier’s nerves twist more and more the closer they get to the station. Collins fidgets next to him and Farrier's heart climbs up his throat even before he can finish thinking that Collins _can't be still even in death._  Collins's eyes flicker to Farrier and he flashes a brief smile as if he heard something, but he says nothing. 

   When the train stops, Collins stands up with him and smiles. 

    “I’ll let you be, now. You’ll be fine,” Collins says, and is gone.

    Farrier finds his way home, walking blank-eyed past the rubble in the streets of his childhood. He fits in with it all, he supposes, another relic of home mangled by war and time and Britain and Germany.

    His mother meets him at the door and calls him by his given name.  

    He has to bend down more to hug her now, and when he does he feels hot tears roll down his cheeks and into the shoulder of her dress. She won’t cry in front of him, but he can feel years worth of tears straining against her frame. She doesn’t ask him any questions beyond if he’d like something to eat. 

    He eats self-consciously, feeling too large in his childhood kitchen and struggling not to disgrace his mother by hunching over his plate and wolfing down his food. In the tragedy of it all, the tension between them that had before been drawn so tight is nowhere to be found. 

    He asks her if she has his bible. She nods and retrieves it. 

    “A friend of yours brought it to me,” she tells him. He swallows hard and nods. 

    "Collins."

    "Yes, that was him."

    “That sounds like him.”

    “Is he...” she trails off apologetically.

    “He was shot down somewhere over the Mediterranean,” Farrier says simply. 

    “I’m so sorry,” she says, her face soft and thoughtful. 

    Farrier nods.  

    “It sounded like you two were close if how he spoke of you was any indication. He seemed quite fond of you,” his mother says, her tone especially gentle. Farrier panics at a knowingness that flickers in her eyes, knowing that she has always known, known enough to be politely disgraced, though it's nowhere to be found now. He holds her gaze as he reaches for his bible on the table between them, only looking away to fan through the pages. 

    The book is as pristine as he left it. He had never been one for reading, especially not the word of God, and had kept all of his ephemera in the pages of a flight manual for safekeeping. Something loose stops the fanning pages, a photograph standing up glaringly in the crease of the pages of 1 Samuel. Farrier presses it down flat against the page and is met by the faces of Collins - just as Farrier left him - and the stranger that is Farrier’s younger self. Collins’s face is still unmarred by war and beaming with some youthful excitement behind the serious lines of his mouth. 

    Farrier doesn't even remember the photograph being taken, somewhere on the airfield with his hand on the small of Collins’s back, smiles just barely gracing their faces. He especially doesn’t remember tucking it into his bible, of all places. 

    “I never went through it,” his mother says, likely seeing the concern in his face. He looks up at her gratefully and reaches for her hand on the table. 

    Farrier goes to bed that night in his old bedroom, finding it more sterile than he left it, but just as he expected it to be. He feels like a stranger and an intruder, gingerly folding up his clothes and getting into bed as if he’s going to be caught and reprimanded for being so out of place.

 

    Collins appears in the dim light as Farrier pulls the covers over himself. He slowly walks along the perimeter of Farrier’s room with his hands behind his back, leaning down to look at photographs on the dresser. He turns to Farrier and smiles. 

    “I’d never have pegged you as having been a child,” Collins points a thumb at the frames on the desk behind him. “Everything go alright?”

    “Yes."

    “Just yes?” 

    “Collins,” Farrier starts, sighing, “did you put a photograph of us in my bible?”

    “The one from the airfield? I did. Crouch had brought me the photos, one for each of us.” 

    Farrier stares up at the ceiling in thought. 

    "Why?"

    Collins shrugs. 

    "Didn't want you to lose it. I would have put it in that flight manual of yours but felt badly about opening it.”

    Farrier chews on the inside of his cheek and nods. 

    “Thank you.”

    Collins looks at him quizzically and falls back on the bed next to Farrier. Farrier hides a wince when the mattress doesn’t creak or bounce with his impact. 

    “Thank you?” Collins repeats. 

    “That flight manual probably got tossed out with everything in it.”

    Farrier is surprised by the twist in his gut at the thought of his notes and photographs being dumped in some garbage bin somewhere. He's lost bigger things. There are worse things to lose than postcards, than photographs, than the drawings Collins would tuck into Farrier's pocket.

    “Oh, no, it didn’t,” Collins says simply, “I took it. I never opened it, but I kept it with my things. I’m sure it got sent home to my mother with everything else.” 

    Farrier nods.     

    "I should go see about my mother, actually. Are you alright?" Collins asks.

    "Yes, I'm alright. Take care, Collins." 

    "Take care," Collins flashes Farrier a grin and is gone. 

-

    The war closes shortly after Farrier returns home. He sits aside and watches celebrations come and go, Collins a cold but welcome presence at his shoulder.  

    "You could at least look a little glad for it," Collins chides. Farrier glares at him tiredly and without any vitriol, standing on a corner overlooking a sea of waving flags.

    "The damage has been done, Collins," Farrier says softly. Collins bobs his head and frowns.  

    "Will you at least get a drink for me?" Collins asks with a smile. 

    "That I can do.”

- 

    Farrier finds himself a flat, pays for it with money that he regards with entitlement as much as disgust. The flat is small - a kitchen and and often too cold, but the city and the creaking pipes offer enough noise to remind him where he is and to drown out the ringing in his ears. Collins flits in and out of his life, sometimes staying for days at a time and then vanishing for just as many.  

    Panic seeps into Farrier often, and without warning or reason. It leaves him nearly paralyzed at times, sometimes over breakfast, sometimes in bed at night, unsure of where he really is. He waits stiffly for a comrade's crying or a guard's shouting to throw him back into a reality he's never sure he truly left. Collins often makes himself known, gently reminding Farrier where he is, and waiting silently for it to pass. Sometimes it helps to feel Collins with him, though sometimes, when Farrier's anxieties leave him expecting to blink himself into a cockpit rather than some fenced-in hell, Collins's presence only makes him less sure of the truth. 

    The sleepless nights are the hardest, feeling as if they go on forever. Collins stays with Farrier, talks with him about anything he can until the sun rises.  

    Collins tells Farrier of everything he missed. He tells Farrier of how much he would have hated the American airmen, how even Farrier would have come to miss the clouds of England after years in the African sun, the best and worst of the planes he'd had to fly. He doesn't tell Farrier about the drinking, or the fights, or the trouble, but Farrier fills in the blanks as he catches on to everything he missed, and for which he assumes his absence was partly to blame.

    "What does dying feel like?" Farrier asks one night, curled on his side around a pillow and gazing up at Collins, who leans against the headboard. The question hangs intrusively in the dark silence until Collins hums thoughtfully.

    “Like taking off.”

    Farrier says nothing.

    Collins is there each time Farrier wakes himself up with his own shouting. He sits at the end of the bed in silence until Farrier can breathe again and then lies back to drone on in hushed tones about nonsense until Farrier can close his eyes again, or until the sun comes up, whichever meets them first. 

    Collins loses track of himself in his nights of rambling, lets slip that despite being very much _dead_  he’s still unsure of God and Heaven and Hell. _Before_  he would talk quietly to Farrier about salvation in the heavy safety of the night, curled together behind the blackout curtains of cheap inn rooms. _This is almost worth being damned,_  Collins would whisper, and Farrier would grumble into his hair about the Church not knowing anything. Collins would roll over to face him, tell Farrier he was right, that  _this sort of thing is in the Bible, anyway._  Farrier had never asked him where to find it. 

    On a precious night on leave, Farrier, nearly asleep after Collins had finished airing his usual concerns, had heard Collins sigh and breathe _I never feel closer to Him than I do when I think of you._

    Now Farrier is silently grateful that Collins’s concerns have moved on to bigger things. Dying will do that, he supposes. Collins goes on about feeling forsaken, let down, cheated, lied to, by both God and the Church.  

    Those moments are when Farrier longs the most to be able to reach for Collins’s hands or pull him into his chest. 

    Early one morning Collins trails off in the middle of his usual sentiments of uncertainty in his God. 

    “Do you know what’s out there, then?” Farrier asks. 

    “No. I can feel it, sometimes, I think. I don’t know what it is, but there’s something.”    

    “Hm.” 

    Collins looks down at Farrier from where he sits against the headboard.

    “Would you like to hear something funny?" Collins asks.

    “Am I going to find it funny?”

    Collins shrugs.

    “We’re not supposed to believe in ghosts. I keep thinking I’m about to get in trouble for all this."

    Farrier does get a laugh out of it. Collins grins up at the ceiling. 

-

    Farrier looks for work, unable to be still and painfully tired of walking around London day in and day out. He knows he can’t take back his job in mechanics, his brutalized hands too stiff, but he wanders in the door anyway. His former boss, a jovial but awkward man by name of Brighton, embraces him and takes his ruined hands with warm understanding. Clearer than ever, Farrier can see the remains of the first war in Brighton's eyes. He offers Farrier a position in training some of the younger boys he had recently hired, and Farrier takes it gratefully. 

    “Glad you made it home,” Brighton tells Farrier one day while Farrier watches two of the new boys puzzle over an engine. Farrier nods, his arms crossed. 

    “Glad to be home,” Farrier says, a response now as automatic as _and also with you._  

    “It never does stop haunting you,” Brighton says, mostly to himself. Farrier turns to him, alarmed, but sees his blue eyes miles away, over the channel in France somewhere, years ago. Farrier tightens his arms across his chest and says nothing.

-    

    Farrier wishes, guiltily and more often than he’d like, that Collins would go. Farrier never tells him so, tries not to even think it, but he knows Collins can feel it. 

    Sometimes the sound of Collins's voice leaves Farrier grappling for the date in his mind, still expecting to find a calendar reading 1939. 

    _Sometimes having you like this is worse than not having you at all,_  Farrier wants to say. At times it nearly bubbles up. Even without Farrier’s words, Collins is still set on edge when the thoughts start welling up in Farrier's mind, as if Collins can feel it. Each time, Collins grows short, seemingly confused with himself about the origins of his frustration, and shouts at Farrier while his face ripples with wounds. On the better days, he simply vanishes altogether. 

    Collins isn’t comfortable. Farrier is heavy with guilt for it. 

   “Do you know why they sent me to Africa?” Collins asks coldly and nonchalantly one evening while Farrier stirs a cup of tea he can’t bring himself to drink. There’s a bitterness in his voice, and a brokenness. Farrier doesn’t say anything, just looks up expectantly. Collins stares him down from across the table, challenging him to ask. 

    “Why?” Farrier gives in, praying his unease isn’t visible. 

    “Because they thought I’d function better somewhere I wouldn’t be reminded of you,” Collins says, his face stiff and his eyes mournful. Farrier’s chest feels empty. "Hudson arranged it, I think. I know he meant well by it, he just thought I needed a fresh start. Didn’t do a damn bit of good.” 

    Farrier watches Collins watch him. 

    “I guess not,” Farrier finally says. 

    “No, I guess not,” Collins echoes. Farrier drops his eyes down to the tea still swirling in his cup. 

    When Farrier looks back up from his tea, Collins is gone. 

-

    “Can’t sleep?” 

    Farrier rolls over and finds Collins reclining against the headboard, arms crossed loosely over his chest. He nods.

    “Can’t you take that off?” Farrier asks, nodding to the Mae West Collins is always wearing. Collins shrugs. 

    “I’ve never tried.”

    Farrier rolls onto his back and looks up at Collins. Collins's eyes hold all his expressions, his mouth still a hard line that begs to smile, but his face holds a dullness like a photograph.

    _You used to be bright as the sun,_  Farrier thinks, remembering how even the flares of Collins’s temper were nearly solar, _and now you're..._

    “A ghost?” Collins finishes aloud, nonchalantly. 

    “Would you mind your business?” Farrier asks, wincing at the shortness of his own tone. 

    “You were the one thinking at me. And my business got boring long ago, Farrier,” Collins sighs. "How was your day?"

    “You know how my day was. I’m sure you were there.” 

    “It’s not all about you, you know,” Collins sighs. Farrier turns his head to him, sees the burns shimmering on his face. 

    “I’m sorry, Collins,” Farrier says. He reaches over for Collins’s hand, his own hand falling through it flat onto the mattress. He chokes and yanks his hand back to himself, his arm tingling. Collins’s jaw twitches and the burn along his cheek grows more vivid, an apparition like paper burning from the center outward. “Collins…” 

    But Collins is gone, and Farrier’s bed feels even colder than it did when he had lain down. 

    The next morning Farrier finds water already boiled for tea, a trick Collins had admitted to mastering for his mother. Farrier calls out a tentative thanks into the silence.  

- 

    Collins gets angry at times, disappears and leaves a chill in Farrier’s flat that Farrier can never burn off with the stove or ward away with a jacket. Collins had always been angry, had always been quick to respond with vitriol, but it had never frightened Farrier like he finds himself frightened when Collins feels like static before a storm. The burn on the side of his face gets angrier with him, the tears in his uniform ripple open again and blood seeps through the fabric while his hair singes and his burned eye closes.

    The argument starts small, begins with an offhand comment Farrier makes without thinking, and ends with Collins bitterly crying out in anger as he vanishes from sight. Farrier feels him leave, but not quite. The chill runs through Farrier’s body and he pulls his jacket off the back of a chair and tries to start the stove as the chill sinks deeper into the room. Collins is still there, just barely lingering with his freezing energy.

    “Collins!” Farrier calls out in frustration. “Fuck off!” 

    Collins reappears thunderously in the small kitchen. Farrier backs up against the stove, resists looking away from Collins’s raw, burned face. Farrier’s skin prickles and his muscles tense as if a lightning storm is threatening on the horizon.  

    “I can’t!” Collins shouts, almost inhumanly loud. “You think I haven’t tried?" 

    Farrier doesn’t speak, his chest heavy beyond words.  

    “You think this is any way to live?” Collins snaps, his voice still raised though now only to an earthly shout. “As if this is even living? I can only take so much of this, Farrier. Do you - you don't know how hard it is to watch my mother cry when I can't hold her. I can only be here with you _like this_ for so long before it’s just too much to bear.”

    Farrier only looks at him. There’s nothing he can say, no gesture he can make, to possibly demonstrate the ache in his chest. He longs to cry.

    “I want to be able to be here, Farrier, for you, but it’s not right. I know you want me here, but it’s not fair,” Collins’s voice breaks, "I can’t even touch you. And if I could hit you right now, Farrier, God knows I would. ” 

    Farrier knows. He had gotten in his fair share of fights with Collins _before_ , and he had pulled Collins out of many more.

    _I’d let you. I’d give anything for you to hit me one more time._

    If Collins hears it, he doesn’t acknowledge it. He starts pacing across the small kitchen floor. Farrier wishes his boots made a sound, tries to ignore their silence.

    “And can you guess what the worst of it is?” Collins asks, “I think you’re the reason I’m stuck here.” 

    “How?” Farrier strains to form his lips around the word.

    “Fuck if I know,” Collins laughs, “but it feels like I’m stuck to you.” 

    “Collins, I -“ Farrier begins, but is cut short as Collins flashes out of the room, pulling the breath from Farrier’s lungs as he goes. 

    Farrier slides to the floor in front of the stove and puts his elbows on his knees, burying his face in his arms. The tears finally come, too hot against his face. He mumbles into his sleeves, apologies and anxieties pouring out muffled into the empty room. He cries until his chest aches and his head is throbbing, and the sobs finally wheeze to a halt. 

    The stove finally starts behind him. He chokes out a quiet _thanks._

    Collins doesn’t appear again for days. 

-

    “How do I do it?” Farrier asks into his lightening bedroom in the early morning after a sleepless night, lying on his side staring out the window. The cold bites through his covers, it had sunk into his bones all night, but he hadn’t felt worthy of starting the stove. His hair ruffles in a faint breeze above the blankets. 

    “Do what?” Collins’s voice comes from out of Farrier’s line of sight. Farrier doesn’t have the strength to move to look at him at where he must be standing at the foot of the bed. Farrier swallows hard. 

    “Let you go,” Farrier whispers into the heavy, freezing silence.

    He feels a light draft across his face and closes his eyes hard, pursing his lips. 

    “They didn’t teach me about this in catechism,” Collins says, closer now. Farrier feels a smile break across his face, laughs as he opens his eyes. Collins is sitting on the edge of the bed, smiling, his entire face intact again. 

    Farrier had made a life out of fixing things and solving puzzles and thinking on his feet. If only there were flight manuals for everything. 

    “Can you tell what’s holding you here?” Farrier asks. 

    “I don’t know. I don’t know how this works,” Collins says, and his face glimmers pink with burns along one side. Farrier’s chest lurches remembering that he can’t reach out to soothe it away. “Something of mine that I gave you, I’d imagine.”

    Farrier squints up at the ceiling in thought until his stomach sinks with an icy weight.

    He pushes the covers back and gets up, padding across the cold floor to the wardrobe. Its door opens with a soft squeak. Collins is behind him, a staticky chill at Farrier's shoulder. In the grey morning light Farrier pushes aside the books on the top shelf and gropes along the wardrobe's backing. His fingers meet leather binding, and it’s colder than he expects. He almost withdraws his arm but instead closes his fingers around it tightly. He turns to Collins, whose face is nearly expressionless, and holds his eyes. Collins’s jaw twitches. 

    Farrier holds his bible in front of him with shaking hands. Collins reaches out to take Farrier’s hands to settle the shaking, and upon contact Farrier flinches his hands backward just as Collins’s fingers pass through his with a soft jolt. 

    “I’m sorry,” they both say at the same time. Collins huffs out a laugh and Farrier sighs heavily. 

    Farrier turns the book on its spine and lets it fall open to its only marked page, a square of thick photograph paper that stands up in the crease of the spine halfway through the Old Testament.

    Collins smiles, the same smile he would shoot Farrier from across a room over some absurd in-joke _before_. Farrier can’t bear to look at it and turns his eyes back down to the open book between them. He feels the electric brush of Collins’s forehead resting against his and doesn’t pull away. 

    Collins reaches out and presses a finger to the photograph’s corner. He withdraws his hand and looks up at Farrier and nods. 

    Farrier softly closes the bible and steps away to sit on his bed, his knees trembling. Collins leans against the dresser. 

    “I’d imagine destroying it would do it,” Collins says with a nonchalance that Farrier finds nearly frightening. 

    “What if it doesn’t work?” Farrier asks, not quite to Collins and not quite to himself.

    “Then we find something else,” Collins says. Farrier pushes away the thought of this going on forever. “How are you going to do it?”

    “Fire, I suppose,” Farrier says, his own voice far away. Collins flinches and nods. 

    “Nothing I haven’t been through before,” Collins smiles grimly. Farrier wants to curse at him for it but holds his tongue. 

    “Where do you want me to…” Farrier swallows hard. Collins hoists himself up to sit on the dresser. “You didn’t get a real burial. This could…it’s the least I can do.” 

    Collins kicks his feet and smiles down into his lap.

    “I don’t think any of that makes much of a difference, Farrier, but if it means something to you - “

    “It does.”

    “Then I want to go home.” 

- 

    Farrier packs a bag, locks his door, and gets on the first train to Scotland. Collins sits with him the entire way.

-

    Farrier’s legs shake as he gets off the train. Collins is at his side, dodging people who can’t see him. 

    “Show me around first?” Farrier asks. Collins grins and agrees, reaches for Farrier’s hand to no avail. His face falls, but still stays lighter than Farrier has seen it in months. 

    Collins leads Farrier through his town, showing Farrier his school, his church, his grandparents’ house, all the places he ever worked, the street where he had gotten in his first fight and the street where he had first won a fight, the home of the girl he likely would have married _had things been a little different._ Once he runs out of memories to show Farrier he finally leads him to the dress shop his mother lives above. 

    Farrier stands on the pavement silently and watches Collins gaze up at the windows, the damaged side of his face shimmering pink again. Farrier begins to reach out for his hand before he remembers he won’t be able to take it. 

    “Ah, well,” Collins sighs, pulling his eyes away. 

    “Do you need to see her?” Farrier asks aloud, not caring who sees him talking to himself. 

    “I did last night. She’ll be at work right now, anyway. I don’t like to bother her while she’s working,” Collins blinks hard a few times. “Farrier?”

    “Collins.”

    “Are you ready?”

    The photograph in Farrier’s breast pocket feels like a block of ice. 

    “Whenever you are.”

    “I am.”

    “Lead the way, then.”

    Collins smiles sadly and starts down the pavement. He leads Farrier back to his church, a small modest thing of grey stone backed by a young stand of narrow trees.

    “Collins,” Farrier starts as Collins leads him along the side. The stained glass looks muddled from the outside without light shining through, only occasional flickers of orange candlelight shining through from inside to give the colors any life. 

    “Yes, Farrier?”

    “I hope wherever you’re going you’ll finally get to take off that damn Mae West.” 

    Collins laughs from deep in his chest. He looks over his shoulder and winks at Farrier.

    “I could take it off any time. It makes me feel safe, is all.” 

    “Then I hope you’ll feel safe enough to not need it.”

    Collins ducks his head but Farrier can still see him smiling. He wants to grab Collins by the shoulder and hold him in place, ask him to wait a moment, _let me see you smile like that again, just one more time, so I don’t forget it._

    “We used to play back here,” Collins says as he leads Farrier down a narrow beaten path behind the church.  

    The ground is soft with moss and greenery under Farrier’s boots, and above the feathery wet thumps of his footsteps he can make out the voices of children chattering in negotiating tones. As they walk, the narrow-trunked trees thin out and are gradually replaced by crumbling stone grave markers and lush green ground cover that leaves the hems of Farrier’s trousers damp. 

    Three boys look up from where they’re gathered around a weather-mottled headstone, each of their faces working to look appropriately suspicious of Farrier to mask their guilt at being caught somewhere they likely shouldn’t be. Farrier pauses and looks to Collins, waiting for him to say something, before realizing the boys can’t see him. 

    “It’s alright,” Collins says to them. He turns to Farrier, his eyes slightly frantic at the realization that they can’t hear him. “Can you tell them it’s alright that they’re here? Tell them you won’t tell anyone.”

    Farrier tells them so, and they nod cautiously. Collins stands with his knuckles curled against his mouth, his eyes distressed and longing. 

  _They must think I’m mad,_  Farrier thinks. 

    Collins tries to linger, but Farrier takes another step and Collins reluctantly moves on with him, taking the lead again. 

    “There’s a foundation of an older church just through those trees. The older boys used to tell us there were ghosts to try and keep us from playing in it,” Collins says, tone edged with sentimentality but the smiles of earlier are gone from his face. Farrier can see the dark foundations of stone amid the undergrowth through the trees.

    The chattering of the boys picks up again, more hushed this time and growing ever distant as they move to the far side of the cemetery. Farrier sits down on the crumbling remains of a stone wall, facing away from the boys he can still feel casting suspicious glances toward him.

    “Is this it, then?” Farrier asks quietly. Collins rests his hands on his hips and looks upward, the same way he always had before turning to Farrier and asking _think they’ll have us flying today?_

    “Aye.”

    “Are you afraid?”

    “I don’t think so.” 

    Farrier swallows hard and undoes his jacket, retrieving the photograph from its interior breast pocket with a heavy sigh. He holds it by the edges, as if it might burn him. 

    “Farrier,” Collins says softly, sitting next to him now, and though it’s almost a whisper Farrier can still hear the notes of controlled panic that he knows so well. Farrier lifts his head to look at him. 

    “Yes?" 

    “I hope your life is peaceful.”

    “Thank you, Collins,” Farrier says, blinking hard against threatening tears and resisting the instinct to pull his eyes away and tilt his head toward the sky. Collins works his jaw hard. He would be crying if he could, Farrier realizes, studying Collins’s face, stretched tight with concern. 

    The voices of the boys have faded away through the trees back toward the street. 

    “I’ll see you,” Collins says, his voice breaking before he lets out a strangled laugh, “it just better not be for a damn long while.” 

    “I’ll do my best.”

    “And thank you for everything, Farrier."

    Farrier feels the first hot tear roll down his cheek and silently curses himself for it. Collins lets out a sad and reassuring _oh_ , the way he had when he would take Farrier’s face in his hands while Farrier would try to hide his tears _before_. 

    “I’m not afraid, Farrier,” Collins says softly. Farrier grinds his teeth. Collins watches him thoughtfully as he balances the photograph on his knee and digs in his pocket, his shaking fingers producing a matchbook.

    “You know that I’ve loved you all this time,” Farrier says, almost a question. 

    “Of course,” Collins says, his voice nearly breaking. “And I don’t think I ever loved anyone like this."

    Farrier laughs, slightly incredulous. He tears a match from the book and sighs, trying to still his hands.

    “Farrier, don’t make it worse for yourself than it needs to be."

    Farrier looks up at Collins once more, studies his face, the lines of his brow and his nose and his mouth. He pulls his eyes away and strikes the match on the back of the book. Collins lets out a shaky sigh next to him.

    “I’m grateful I've had you,” Collins says. Farrier lifts his head from the shrinking match and looks up to Collins, who for the first time since he appeared looks as young and unmarred as Farrier had left him so many years ago. 

    “I’ve thanked God for you every day,” Farrier says, and it's not untrue.

    The match is burning down closer to Farrier's fingers, and he wishes there were a way to say everything in his heart before the flame reaches his thumb and burns out. He reaches out and gingerly takes the photograph off his knee. 

    “It’s alright,” Collins whispers. Farrier turns to him again. Collins nods, a tired smile at the corner of his lips.

    Farrier brings the dwindling match flame to the corner of the photograph.

    “Best of luck, Collins.”

    “Best of luck.” 

    Farrier thinks, for one fleeting second, of his Spitfire on the beach.

    The corner of the photograph catches fire just as the match flame meets Farrier’s thumb and goes out. Collins inhales sharply. Farrier drops his hand to the stone wall between them, and Collins reaches for it. Farrier lets the electric sting of Collins’s touch stay, numbing his arm and neck. The photograph warps with heat and its burning edge consumes the image, moving across the paper like a ripple in water. Farrier reluctantly looks up to Collins, whose eyes flicker intently between Farrier and the photograph. He nods at Farrier, his eyes glassy, and looks up at the sky. 

    “I’ll certainly miss it,” Collins says softly. 

    The tingling in the hand Collins is holding lessens as the heat of the flame grows closer to Farrier's thumb and forefinger. Collins shimmers slightly in the cloud-muted sunlight. His eyes come back to Farrier’s and hold them, steady with the boldness that always defined them. Farrier can see the movement of Collins’s hand trying to tighten around Farrier’s to no avail as the cold, shocking sensation of his touch grows fainter. 

    The flame is threatening Farrier’s finger and thumb, he can feel it starting to blister the skin at the tips of his fingers. He doesn’t move his gaze from Collins’s face, holds Collins’s blue eyes without blinking until he can finally release his grip and relinquish the last corner for the photograph to the flames, and then Collins is gone.  

    Collins doesn’t leave a glaring, cold absence in his wake like he had before, and Farrier’s heart slams hard into the emptiness. 

    “Collins?” Farrier softly tests the new silence.

    Farrier sets his jaw and tips his head up to the sky, where the sun is just beginning to break through a haze. He inhales a painful, shaky breath and closes his eyes. He sits until the clouds smother the last of the sun and the dampness of the air creeps back into his bones. 

    When Farrier stands he feels lighter. His feet come up off the ground more easily now as he picks his way through the crumbling cemetery back toward the street. The stained glass of the church is brighter as he passes it, more alive with motion and color now. Collins likely thought of its stone walls and vibrant windows every time he stole away to church while on leave, often dragging Farrier along with him. 

    Farrier pauses at the bottom of the steps. The thought of stepping inside to pray after everything feels sinful. God wouldn’t remember Farrier, not after so many years without prayer, and if he did he would have no reason to listen. Farrier isn’t sure he remembers how to pray, he never felt as if he had been doing it right in the first place. After so many years of varying degrees of sin, the worst of them likely being neglecting God, there isn’t a reason Farrier can think of for God to listen to him. 

    But Collins prayed every day. Collins went to church as often as he could. God would listen to even a clumsy prayer in Collins’s name, or at least that’s what a Protestant would say.  

    So Farrier starts up the steps toward the worn wooden doors of the church. He reaches out to grasp the cold handle just as it gives into his hand as the door opens toward him. 

    “I’m sorry,” Farrier says, stepping back. A woman holding her coat closed over her chest echoes his apology, continuing past him as she releases the door into Farrier’s grip.  

    She stops, her shoes scraping on the stone as she turns back to Farrier with a puzzled expression. She takes off her hat, her meticulously rolled white-streaked red hair bright even in the overcast afternoon. Her eyes, though rimmed with something somber, are achingly familiar. 

    “I’m sorry, I know you, don’t I?” she asks, the corner of her mouth quirking downward thoughtfully on the last words.    

    Heat paints Farrier’s face and ice fills his stomach at her expression, her inquisitive eyes watching him with an intensity that is nothing but painfully _Collins_.

    "Oh, Christ," Farrier breathes, then winces as he realizes his language, "I'm so sorry, I didn't...I'm sorry - "

    "Rosie Collins," she laughs as she tests her own name on him and extends a hand. He shakes her hand and introduces himself, blinking hard and fast against a flood of feelings he can't hold onto long enough to identify. "I've seen you in my son's photographs, I think."  

    Farrier bites his bottom lip. There's no turning away from what's in front of him, not now, so he straightens his shoulders, furrows his brow, and keeps on as he always has.    

    Rosie reaches out and takes Farrier's elbow, another too-familiar Collins maneuver. 

    "Are you alright?" she asks. "I'm so sorry, I can't imagine - "

    "I'm alright," Farrier nods, scrubbing a hand through his hair, "just had a bit of a shock." 

    "Do you have somewhere to be?" Rosie asks, and her eyes flicker up to the church and back to Farrier. 

    “No,” Farrier says before he can stop himself.

    “Walk with me? The Lord can wait," she smiles, “I’m just headed home.” 

    Farrier's feet come up off the ground miraculously as he steps up beside her. He offers her his arm and she chuckles gratefully but declines. Her coat has fallen open and reveals a simple blue work dress.

    "He wrote about you very fondly," Rosie says as she begins walking. Farrier closes his eyes for a step. "There are drawings and photographs of you in his bible." 

    Something oppressively sticky hangs in the air around Farrier's head. A panic roots in his chest and holds fast, a panic that Collins's mother knows something, a panic that he shouldn't be here, talking and walking with the mother of a man he had, however inadvertently, hurt in so many ways. His gut twists with the same guilt and awkward shame he had felt when he was young and shaking the hand of the father of the boy he had been pressed up against not twenty minutes before.

    “What brings you up here?” Rosie finally asks, cautiously, like she’s not ready to hear the answer, whatever it may be.    

    Farrier doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know how to begin to explain. He could almost laugh at the thought of telling this woman that he simply needed to send off the ghost of her dead son. Collins would laugh about it, but Collins is - finally - nowhere to be found. 

    Rosie looks up at him with motherly concern.

    “Looking for some closure, I suppose,” Farrier manages. It’s not a lie.

    Rosie nods in understanding and flattens her mouth in thought, another expression so unbearably resurrective of Collins that Farrier wonders how she can bear to look in the mirror long enough to do her hair and makeup so neatly. 

    “If only it were that easy,” she says. Farrier looks away from her and sighs. “I’m glad you came, though. I have something I think you might want back."

    Farrier wants to turn and go. He wants to leave every relic of Collins where it belongs.  

    _I don’t know how many more times I can say goodbye to him,_ Farrier wants to say, but he keeps walking alongside her in silence. 

    They reach Rosie's flat, nestled above the dress shop, and Farrier reluctantly follows her up the back stairs. Rosie opens the door into the kitchen and closes it behind Farrier, who stands stiffly with the doorknob pressing into his lower back while she takes off her coat and drapes it over a chair at the table. Farrier feels like an intruder, keeps his eyes away from the framed photographs in the adjacent sitting room.  

    “I won’t keep you,” Rosie assures him gently, noticing his discomfort, “I just need a moment.”

    She toes off her shoes, worn but well-polished, and pads across the kitchen, disappearing into a bedroom. 

    Farrier’s eyes are pulled to a jar on the kitchen table, stuffed with banknotes and coins. Collins had told him once about it, how as soon as he had been able to work he and his mother had both contributed to it, a homely savings of whatever they didn’t absolutely have to spend. Farrier wonders if Rosie still adds to it, or if the notes in it are still Collins’s, if she still even needs it.

    Rosie reappears and switches on another light.  

    She stands before him and holds out his flight manual, still worn and overstuffed with his own sentimentality. Farrier chews his lip and furrows his brow.  

    “Thank you,” he finally manages as he takes its worn pages in his hands. It feels lighter than he expected, and it isn’t molten against his fingers, it doesn’t leave his palms tingling like he now knows something so full of ghosts rightfully should. 

    “I’m glad it could find you,” Rosie says. Farrier looks at her directly for what feels like the first time, her face lined with hard work under notes of sadness. 

    “I’m sorry,” Farrier says softly, and the words fall heavily between them, “about…that he’s gone. I’m sorry.” 

    Rosie only nods, though her face softens slightly.  

    “I’m sorry as well,” she offers, a condolence given directly to Farrier, more weighted than any condolence he’s received yet. 

    Farrier sighs and shifts in his jacket, his shoulders lighter than before. 

    “The ghosts never do go away, do they?” she says, a statement more than a question. Farrier shakes his head, praying that he won’t shed tears in front of her. His eyes flicker to the jar on the table. 

    “No, I don’t think they do,” Farrier says. She looks at him with peaceful resignation.  _And I’m one of them, aren’t I? Just like you._

    “Right, well, I’ll let you go,” Rosie finally says, her voice breaking. Farrier nods, pursing his lips. He removes a hand from his stony grip on the flight manual and shakes her hand again. “And thank you. Suppose something's looking out for us, for me to run into you and all."

    “Yes indeed, Mrs. Collins. Thank you,” Farrier says, nearly a whisper. "And do take care of yourself."

    Rosie opens the door for him. She smiles at him as he steps out, a purely Collins smile, and gently shuts the door. 

    Farrier tucks the flight manual into his jacket's breast pocket, filling the emptiness left by the photograph. He looks up toward the sky, clear since he last saw it, almost blue enough for flying. A blue sky is a ghost too, he supposes, and pushes his hands into his pockets, heaves a sigh, and carries on forward. 

**Author's Note:**

> nobody ever kills collins. what's that about? why did i have to be the one to take this bullet?
> 
> catch me on twitter @thehubbins or tumblr @hubbins. talk to me please, i am begging you. i have a spotify playlist for these two.
> 
> a lovely and talented soul drew a part of this fic and you can see it for yourself [here.](https://general-armitagehux.tumblr.com/post/171763166356/if-u-want-farriercollins-angst-read-this-and-die)


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